


The soul is healed by being with children

by oanja



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 18:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1560692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oanja/pseuds/oanja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Babysitting adventures, or how Alex is a total softie inside</p>
            </blockquote>





	The soul is healed by being with children

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is fanfiction, so please don't read if you know the people in this story. 
> 
> Thank you opusculasedfera for beta reading. You are the best!
> 
> Notes: The playoffs are stressful and I needed some fluff in my life... The title is a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, because why not?

Alex knows there’s something fishy going on when Gally calls him and asks him to come over and hang out. Not that they don’t hang out normally, but Gally sounds odd on the phone and promises to pay him if he brings doughnuts on his way over. It’s extra suspicious because Gally never pays back for anything voluntarily. 

So, here he is, standing in the doorway of Gally’s apartment with a box of doughnuts, staring in disbelief at Gally, who’s grinning sheepishly at him and holding a baby. There’s a bigger kid peeking at him from behind Gally’s legs too.

“What--?” Alex has to stop after the first word, because he can’t even form a whole sentence that isn’t filled with profanity.

“What’s in the box?” The bigger kid asks and points a small finger at Alex. He has messy chin length hair that curls a bit and huge blue eyes. The kid looks vaguely familiar, like maybe Gally as shown him a photo, but he’s not sure.

“Brendan?” Alex asks again, super close to bolting. Meeting kids for work is one thing. There are always parents or other adults around and he only has to sign something, smile a bit and he’s done. This looks a lot more complicated than that.

Gally adjusts the baby he’s holding against his hip and smiles even wider. It’s not reassuring at all, he just looks nervous. Alex doesn’t understand why Gally bothers trying to hide what he’s actually feeling when they’re not on the ice.

“My cousin Lena and her husband are in town for the weekend. They’re coming to the game on Sunday and taking in the sights and stuff? I’m not actually sure how this happened but I guess I might have mentioned that I could babysit if they wanted to have some alone time?” Gally makes each of those sentences sound like questions and Alex is going to leave him here alone, because Gally is too stupid to live and should be left to suffer.

“Don’t do the judgy face dude! I need help.” Gally protests and walks away with the messy haired kid in tow. “Pete do you want to have a doughnut? This is Alex, I told you he’d bring us snacks. Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll get you some juice too. I think I have juice,” The kid—Pete-- looks back at Alex, looking a lot friendlier at the mention of snacks and somehow Alex finds himself following them.

Gally helps Pete climb on the bar stool at the breakfast bar before going to the fridge. Alex isn’t sure it’s a good idea for the kid to sit that high up, so he hovers behind the boy, still holding the doughnut box. Pete turns precariously on his seat to look at him. “Can we eat now?”

“Sure.” Alex says and puts the box on the counter and opens it. The kid goes for the sugar glazed one instantly and Alex frowns because he’d gotten that one for himself. It’s too late to protest now though, Pete already has both his hands on it and has taken a huge bite out of it.

Gally joins them with an orange juice carton in his free hand, “Hold Bea while I find a glass.”

Again Alex reacts too slowly. Gally is already pushing the baby to him and Alex only manages to make a disgruntled sound before he has to hold the baby unless he wants to drop it. Alex isn’t sure if he should even call it a baby. The kid seems to hold itself up pretty well, not floppy like some babies he’s had to hold before. It’s—or She’s looking at him and gripping his shirt collar. 

“Dog!” She says and slaps Alex on the chin.

Pete laughs and sprays doughnut crumbs everywhere. “She says that about everything. She’s stupid.”

Gally pours some juice for him, “I don’t think you should say that about your sister. She’s just learning.” 

There is no way he’s staying here. Alex goes to hand the baby back but Gally gives him the puppy eyes and sits down next to Pete, “Let me eat first, please? I’ve been holding her for an hour and she’s heavy. I need a rest.”

Alex glares daggers at Gally, but he’s holding a baby who’s still poking him in the face and that seems to be diminishing the effect. Bea is fascinated by his stubble and keeps running her little hands against his chin and cheeks. 

Still, Alex is about to ask why on earth Gally didn’t call one of the guys who actually knew what they were doing when it came to kids. Briere would surely have volunteered to help with babysitting, he’s always talking about his own kids and how much he misses them. Before Alex has the chance to open his mouth, Pete loses his grip on the glass he was drinking from and it slips from his grip, shattering on the floor.

“Oops!” Pete says and peers down from his perch at the glass shards on the floor. “It was slippery!” he explains. There must have been a lot of juice left too, because Alex’s pant legs got splashed too, not to mention the orange puddle spreading on the tiles.

Gally stuffs the last bit of his doughnut into his mouth, still chewing as he says, “It’s okay, I’ll clean it up.” 

Alex moves out of the way and the three of them watch Gally mop the floor up with paper towels and collect the glass shards up carefully.

“I’ll vacuum here later. Don’t step on anything,” Gally says. Alex wonders if Gally even owns a vacuum cleaner.

Bea, ignored while Alex was watching the cleanup begins to gnaw on the collar of Alex’s flannel shirt.

“Uh, that’s not for you,” Alex says and tries to pull it out of her mouth, but she makes an angry face at him and Alex gives up. He really doesn’t want her to start screaming, not this close to his ear.

“I’m still thirsty,” Pete announces and licks his fingers. He’s pulled the box to him and is picking out the last bits of icing from the cardboard. Pete has sugar on his cheeks and Alex is impressed. How did the kid have time to eat so many doughnuts, so quickly? 

Gally throws away the soggy paper towels and looks at Alex, frazzled. “Can you get him a new glass? I should vacuum now and not later, right? I mean what if someone steps on glass, that’s dangerous.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, ruffling Pete’s hair on his way out of the room. Alex is pretty sure Gally wouldn’t bother if the kids weren’t there, he’s seen the place after some parties and glass was the least of Gally’s worries then.

Alex is glad he didn’t even remember to take his shoes off so he can just walk to the cupboards and find a smaller sturdier looking glass for Pete. Gally has some ridiculous novelty mugs and bright colored plastic cups and Alex picks one of those after sniffing it to make sure it doesn’t actually still smell like alcohol.

“How many did you eat?” he asks as he watches Pete drink his juice from the new cup.

The boy holds up two fingers, then puts them into his juice glass and licks them clean. It’s not so bad if Gally had time to eat the other two. Two doughnuts can’t be that bad for him surely?

Apparently Gally actually owns a vacuum and even knows where it’s stored, because he comes back with one. “Maybe you should go to the living room while I do this?”

“I want a piggy back ride!” Pete demands and goes to stand up on his chair. Both Gally and Alex lurch towards him to make sure he doesn’t fall. 

“I’m already holding your sister,” Alex tries to protest, but the boy must be part monkey, because he’s already climbing on his back.

Gally, the bastard, is laughing at him and Alex is going to kill him after these hellions are gone. Right now he needs to get to the living room before Pete strangles him.

“Aaaaaa, Bea licked me!” Pete screams. Alex’s ear will never recover.

“No!” Bea says in protest, flailing her arms. Trying to hit her brother maybe? Alex isn’t sure, because she’s mostly hitting him instead and he definitely hasn’t done anything to deserve the abuse.

Luckily they make it to the couch and Alex gets down on his knees so Pete can hop on the furniture and off of him. He deposits Bea next to her brother and tries to catch his breath. 

“What kind of games do you have?” Pete asks and looks expectantly at Alex. Before he can even think of an answer Bea is on her feet and toddling towards him. The couch is soft under her tiny feel, making her wobble as she tries to stay upright on the uneven surface. That looks dangerous, so Alex lifts her onto the floor.

“Dog!” She says again and climbs on his lap. Alex thought babies were supposed to be shy and not like strangers. That would have been preferable. Especially when she almost steps on his nuts while he tries to help her sit down on his lap.

“She always wants to be carried. It’s stupid. I wanna play now.” Pete sounds grumpy and Alex is pretty sure things will quickly turn to shit if he can’t think of something to occupy the kid with. 

As far as Alex knows, Gally doesn’t have any G rated games in his apartment and Pete seems a bit young to handle a PS4 controller anyway.

The vacuum cleaner cuts off in the kitchen, so Alex raises his voice to shout at him, “Do you have games for Pete?”

Gally joins them in the room and oofs as Pete barrels into his legs, looking up at him hopefully.

“I have ministicks, do you want to play hockey, Pete?”

Pete crinkles his nose and shrugs. “I guess.”

Alex doesn’t bother getting up; Bea is still sitting on his lap and playing with his fingers. He’s already tired of babysitting and he hasn’t even been here for half an hour. Gally and Pete barrel back into the room, both holding ministicks. Pete is holding his stick like it’s a gun and making shooting noises and Alex isn’t sure how it’s possible for a Canadian kid to be so uninterested about playing any kind of hockey with actual NHL players.

It doesn’t take long to set up and Gally plays the goalie while Pete tries to hit the puck past him through the doorway. Alex spots a bright yellow bag near the hallway entrance and goes to get it. It’s obviously stuff for the kids and Bea suddenly seems very interested again and helps him empty the whole thing onto the couch. There are diapers, toys and a few jars of baby food. Alex wonders if they’re ruined because they haven’t been in the fridge, but the label says room temperature is okay.

“You hungry?” He asks Bea, feeling stupid, because does she even understand anything yet?

She reaches for the jar, so he takes that as a yes and carries her to the kitchen again, looking for a spoon.

“This is boring,” Pete is saying when he comes back and Alex exchanges a look with Gally. How could anything even slightly related to hockey be boring? 

“Switch,” Alex says and gives Bea to Gally with the spoon and jar.

“Do you like Fruit Ninja?” he asks Pete and grabs Gally’s tablet from the side table. That should be an okay game for a little kid, and as long as Pete doesn’t accidentally open any of Gally’s porn folders, they should be okay. They’ve watched some freaky stuff while bored on road trips, but Alex is confident he’ll be able to grab the tablet away from Pete in time, if it comes to that. 

~*~

Alex feels like he’s been bag skated after playing in the last game of a back-to-back. He’s lying face down on the couch, Pete sitting on his back, watching some kind of cartoon on the TV. It’s been hours since he got here and Alex is going to murder Gally as soon as the kids are back with their parents and he’s had some sleep.

Bea, who seems to have run out of energy after crying for the last half hour, is sleeping on the carpet. She refused to put her pants back on after they’d had to change her diaper, so she’d been running around in just a diaper for the past hour. Alex thinks he’d be able to sleep on the carpet too, if he had two minutes of peace and quiet. Neither one of them had wanted to try lift her anywhere softer, in case she woke up and started crying again.

Gally looks like he’s sleeping too, he’s leaning against the couch, sitting on the floor with his hand on Bea’s leg, like he’s worried she’ll disappear. It’s not an unfounded fear either. They’d lost her for a bit earlier, when Pete had been complaining about how bored he was and both he and Gally had forgotten to keep an eye on her. It had taken them a few minutes to find her in the bathroom, putting an errant sock into the toilet. Alex hopes she didn’t put her hands in there first, but they had washed them pretty thoroughly just in case, so she should be okay.

Then there had been the moment when he was playing tag with Pete and he’d lost his balance mid-turn and fell. Alex thinks his heart actually stopped for a second as he watched the boy fall and miss the edge of the coffee table by inches.

Luckily nothing had happened and Pete hadn’t even cried, but Alex had refused to play tag after that. Instead he’d bribed Pete with some more snacks. Maybe he should have known better than to give Pete cookies, but Gally didn’t really have food in his apartment and Alex hadn’t known how hyper kids could get after too much sugar.

For a kid who had no interest in hockey, Pete sure enough still had energy for other physical activities. There was a pillow fort in Gally’s bedroom now and they had played ‘the floor is lava’ after the fort had been finished. Pete had also instructed them how to swing him up between them while Alex and Gally each held one of his hands. This had been fine until they all got a bit too into it and Pete kicked a lamp over, which almost went through the window. 

Then they were back to tag, so Alex got to rest for a bit, and hold Bea. She was surprisingly easy to take care of, if you forgot about the sock and the no pants thing. She was also much more entertained by Fruit Ninja than her brother had been.

He had helped her clear a level while Pete and Gally ran from one room to the next. Pete had a really high pitched shriek and he liked to use it way too often. Alex wondered what Gally’s neighbors could hear through the walls and hoped the sound proofing was up to the task.

After running around like a maniac for way too long, Pete agreed to sit down and draw for a while. His parents had packed crayons and paper for him, so Pete sat on the floor and had his paper on the coffee table. He seemed completely uninterested on staying on the paper though, coloring way over the edges and onto the table, seeming to be trying to see which color stood out best on the black table top. Gally looked like he wanted to scold him for it, but instead just collapsed on the couch next to Alex. They had learned really quickly to pick their battles. 

This is when Bea started fussing, of course.

And here they were finally. Bea had fallen asleep, Pete had gotten bored of drawing, but had agreed to watch TV instead and things were quiet. Alex could see the clock on the Blu-Ray player and was surprised to see he’d only been here for three hours. There had been no time to keep track of the time before, but Alex could have sworn he’d been stuck in this babysitting hell a lot longer.

The doorbell wakes Alex from a daze: he’d been more than half asleep. Pete jumps off of him and runs for the door, “It’s mom and dad! Open the door! Open, open!”

The shouting wakes Bea and Gally too, but Alex is already up and he only has the energy to feebly slap Gally on the head as he walks past.

When Alex opens the door, Pete leaps into the arms of a couple Alex has never met and it’s suddenly kind of awkward. The lady looks bemused, but luckily Gally comes to join them, Bea in his arms.

“Mama!” Bea says and reaches for her, making her forget what she’d been about to say. Alex makes a hasty retreat to the bathroom and locks the door. He hopes all Gally’s relatives will be gone by the time he comes out. And he’s prepared to camp out in here as long as it takes.

“You can come out, they left. My cousin, Sarah, wanted to thank you for helping me with the kids, but I told her it was okay. And you can meet them again after the game tomorrow,” Gally says through the door a few minutes later.

Alex opens it and glares and Gally. “I’m not going to meet your relatives after the game, are you out of your mind?”

“Come on, you have to come say bye to them. I think Pete almost cried right now when he noticed you were gone and didn’t get to say bye,” Gally says and brings his arms around Alex’s neck. He’s grinning again, like he knows Alex is going to do what he wants.

“I won’t. It would be weird. And stop grinning, I’m so mad with you. Never ever do anything like this again, or I’ll kill you,” Alex grouses and punches Gally on the ribs.

Gally oofs and lets go of Alex, rubbing his side as he follows Alex to the bedroom. Alex wants to sleep, but the stupid fort is still there, with all the pillows Gally owns on the bed and blankets propped up with hockey sticks they’d taped together.

“Fuck it,” Alex says, gets out of most of his clothes, and crawls into the fort. It’s actually a pretty kick-ass fort, the kind he was never allowed to build when he was a kid, and he’s pretty proud of how sturdy it turned out. Not that he’s going to admit that out loud. It’s still better than sleeping on the floor, no matter how tempting that had seemed back in the living room.

Of course Gally, who’s an idiot with no sense of self preservation, climbs in with him and collapses half on top of Alex.

“Seriously, fuck off,” Alex says and tries to dislodge Gally, with little success.

“No, and besides, where am I supposed to sleep if I can’t be here?” Gally asks, his voice a bit muffled, because he’s maneuvering a duvet over the both of them.

“I hate you so much,” Alex answers automatically and yawns. He shouldn’t fall asleep this early, it will fuck with his internal clock and they have a game tomorrow, but he doesn’t care. He’s so tired.

Besides, Gally is petting his hair, which is nice, so maybe Alex will let him live.

“You owe me for this. I don’t even know what could make us even after this,” Alex says even as his eyes droop closed.

Gally kisses his shoulder, sloppy and warm. “I do owe you. Do you remember that thing we talked about during the Florida road trip when you drank too much tequila and actually talked about stuff? We could do that.”

That makes a frisson of interest pass through Alex, even in his exhausted state. “Yeah, okay. That would be a start of making this up to me.”

Gally laughs and hugs him with one arm, before burrowing even closer. Alex knows it’ll get too hot and uncomfortable after a while, but right then it feels nice and he’s already half asleep anyway and too tired to argue against cuddling. He’ll just have to make Gally pay once he’s awake again.


End file.
